ACTUACIÓN ANTE SOSPECHA O CONFIRMACIÓN DE CASOS EN EL CENTRO

‘‘No man, deep down in the privacy of his heart, has any con- siderable respect for himself,’’ supposed Mark Twain, anticipating the late twentieth-century self-esteem movement. One of the movement’s architects, humanistic psychologist Carl Rogers, agreed. When dis- puting the religious doctrine that humanity’s problems often arise from excessive self-love (pride), Rogers wrote that, to the contrary, most people he knew ‘‘despise themselves, regard themselves as worthless and unlovable.’’ ‘‘All of us have inferiority complexes,’’ echoed John Powell. ‘‘Those who seem not to have such a complex are

only pretending.’’ As Groucho Marx lampooned, ‘‘I don’t want to be- long to any club that would accept me as a member.’’

Actually, most of us have a good reputation with ourselves. In studies of self-esteem, even low-scoring people respond in the mid range of possible scores (by saying ‘‘somewhat’’ or ‘‘sometimes’’ to statements such as ‘‘I am fun to be with’’ and ‘‘I have good ideas’’— statements that most people readily agree with). Moreover, one of social psychology’s most provocative and repeatedly confirmed con- clusions concerns the potency of ‘‘self-serving bias.’’

People accept more responsibility for good deeds than for bad, and for successes than for failures. In dozens of experiments, people read-

ily accept credit when told they’ve succeeded on some task, but they frequently attribute supposed failure to external factors, such as bad luck or an impossible situation. Similarly, in explaining their victo- ries, athletes commonly credit themselves, but they attribute losses to bad breaks, bad refereeing, or the other team’s super effort or dirty play. Such blame-shucking has a long tradition: ‘‘The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit from the tree, and I ate.’’

On insurance reports, drivers have offered countless self-serving explanations: ‘‘An invisible car came out of nowhere, struck my car, and vanished.’’ ‘‘As I reached an intersection, a hedge sprang up, obscuring my vision.’’ ‘‘A pedestrian hit me and went under my car.’’

In a classic demonstration of self-serving bias, Michael Ross and Fiore Sicoly found that young married Canadians typically took more responsibility for house cleaning and child care than their spouses credited them for. The phenomenon has been observed many times since. Ask a wife and a husband to estimate what percentage of the time they each do the dishes, walk the dog, turn out the lights, or shop, and their estimates will usually sum to more than 100 percent. The same is true of people working on group projects, of athletes on teams, and of debaters.

Self-serving intuitions about responsibility contribute to marital discord, worker dissatisfaction, and bargainer stalemate. Most di- vorcing people blame their breakup on their underperforming part- ner. Most managers blame poor performance on workers’ inability or indolence. (The workers more often blame something external—ex- cessive workload, difficult co-workers, ambiguous assignments.) And

people evaluate pay raises as fairer when receiving more rather than less than most others. Seldom do managers hear, ‘‘That’s not fair! You’re paying me too much.’’ ‘‘What have I done to deserve this?’’ is something we ask about our difficulties, not our successes (those we assume we deserve).

Students exhibit the self-serving bias. When receiving a good exam grade, they accept credit and regard the exam as valid. When receiving a poor grade, they often fault the exam. Teachers are not immune from this bias—they tend to accept some credit for students’ achievements but to blame failure on the students. ‘‘With my help, Gillian graduated with honors. Despite my help, George flunked out.’’

Most people see themselves as better than average. Our intuitions do

not insult us. Nine in ten managers rate themselves as superior to their average peer, as do nearly nine in ten Australians when rating their job performance. In three surveys, nine in ten college professors rated themselves as superior to their average colleague. And most drivers—even most drivers who have been hospitalized after acci- dents—believe themselves safer and more skilled than the average driver. ‘‘The one thing that unites all human beings, regardless of age, gender, religion, economic status or ethnic background,’’ observes Dave Barry, ‘‘is that deep down inside, we all believe that we are above average drivers.’’

Compared with their average peer, most people also believe them- selves to be more intelligent, better looking, and less prejudiced. In a 1997 Gallup Poll, 44 percent of white Americans rated other whites as having high prejudice against blacks (5 or higher on a 0 to 10 scale). Yet only 14 percent rated themselves as similarly prejudiced.

We’re also more ethical than others. In national surveys, most business people see themselves as more ethical than the average busi- ness person. Even social psychologists, who know about self-serving bias, regard themselves as more ethical than most other social psy- chologists. (Those of us who research or teach these phenomena are not automatically exempt from them.)

Los Angeles residents have viewed themselves as healthier than most of their neighbors, and most college students believe that they will outlive their actuarially predicted age of death by about ten years. In one poll of baby boomers, three in four thought they looked

younger than their peers, and four in five said they had fewer wrin- kles than other people their age. In another poll, 12 percent of people acknowledged feeling old for their age, while five times as many—66 percent—thought they were young for their age. Every community, it seems, is like Lake Wobegon, where ‘‘all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.’’ All this calls to mind Freud’s joke about the husband who told his wife, ‘‘If one of us should die, I think I should go live in Paris.’’

And what happens when we die? Asked by U.S. News and World

Report who was at least ‘‘somewhat likely’’ to go to heaven, 19 percent

of Americans thought that O. J. Simpson was likely to be welcomed at the pearly gates. As of the poll date, 1997, they were more optimistic about Bill Clinton (52 percent), Princess Diana (60 percent), and Michael Jordan (65 percent). The second closest person to a per- ceived heavenly shoo-in was Mother Teresa (79 percent). And who do you supposed topped Mother Teresa? At the head of the class, with an 87 percent perceived heavenly admission rate, people placed them-

selves.

Self-serving bias is most apparent on socially desirable, subjective dimensions—for example on ‘‘driving ability’’ and ‘‘social skills’’ rather than the less subjective and necessary ‘‘handwriting’’ and ‘‘jumping ability.’’ (Did you, too, rank your driving ability and social skill higher than your handwriting and jumping?) Students are more likely to rate themselves superior in ‘‘moral goodness’’ than in ‘‘intel- ligence.’’ And community residents overwhelmingly see themselves as caring more than most others about the environment, about hun- ger, and about other social issues, though they don’t see themselves as doing more with their time and money. If it’s subjective and if it’s good, it’s us.

Subjective dimensions give us leeway in defining them to suit our skills. Assessing our ‘‘leadership ability’’ allows us each to conjure up an image of an effective leader whose style is like our own. Rating our ‘‘athletic ability’’ we may ponder our swimming or golfing, and not the agonizing P.E. classes where we struck out time and again. In one College Entrance Examination Board survey of 829,000 high school seniors, 0 percent (that is not a typo) rated themselves below average in the subjective and valued ‘‘ability to get along with others,’’ 60

percent rated themselves in the top 10 percent, and 25 percent saw themselves among the top 1 percent. With apologies to Elizabeth Barrett Browning, ‘‘How do I love me? Let me count the ways!’’

False consensus and uniqueness. We further shore up our self-image

by misperceiving the extent to which others think and act as we do. On matters of opinion, we find support for our positions by over- estimating the extent to which others agree. If we’re for it, we pre- sume that others will be, too. And those who harbor negative ideas— for example, about another racial group—will presume that many others share their views. How we perceive others reveals something of ourselves.

When we behave badly or fail in a task, we can reassure ourselves by thinking such lapses common. After one person lies to another, the liar begins to perceive the other as dishonest. ‘‘Okay, I lied. But does- n’t everyone?’’ Those who smoke, or cheat on their spouses or income taxes, will likely overestimate the number of others doing likewise.

Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione may have been illustrating this

‘‘false consensus effect’’ when commenting on a national survey in which 83 percent of adults reported zero or one sexual partner in the previous year: ‘‘Positively, outrageously stupid and unbelievable. I would say five partners a year is the average for men.’’

False consensus occurs partly because, lacking other information, we impute our knowledge and responses to others. One professor asked his class to guess what percentage of the class had cell phones. Not knowing, they tended to impute their choices to others. Those who had cell phones guessed that 65 percent did; those who didn’t guessed that 40 percent did (the truth was in between). Also, it’s easy to overestimate relatively infrequent negative behaviors. If 20 percent of people lie, there is lots of room for overestimating the number of liars. Also, we’re more likely to associate with people who share our attitudes and behaviors, and then to judge the world from those we know. Perhaps this is why Pamela Anderson Lee could say that ‘‘ev- erybody says I’m plastic from head to toe. Can’t stand next to a radia- tor or I’ll melt. I had [breast] implants, but so has every single person in L.A.’’

Concerning matters of ability or instances when we behave well, however, we more often intuit a false uniqueness effect. Though our

failings seem normal, our talents and virtues seem special. Thus those who drink heavily but use seat belts overestimate (false con- sensus) the number of other heavy drinkers and underestimate (false uniqueness) the commonality of seat belt use. Who we are affects our social intuitions. And ‘‘how little we should enjoy life if we never flattered ourselves!’’ mused the French wit La Rochefoucauld.